Caregivers encompass uncountable numbers of an often poorly educated workforce who take care of our loved ones when we cannot. These caregivers live in our communities. They become a part of our homes and families. Increasing caring literacy for these medical and non-medical caring professionals is a way to give back. It provides a career path that not only stabilizes caregivers in the fundamental science and stages of dying, but it may increase spiritual awareness, loving kindness to self and other, and overall sense of well being as well.

Increasing end of life literacy may positively influence the patient’s experience of care, decreasing pain and suffering in our communities. It may expand our understanding of “do no harm”. In our time of deepest vulnerability, frailty, and dependence, caring literacy protects all of us.

Validating Roles of Caregivers

By validating the work of caring professionals as Sacred Passage Guides, we confirm the worth and value of caregivers who dive into the turbulent, complex waters surrounding the stages of life, illness and death for all of us. When we bring human caring sciences to our home caregivers—the foreign laborers, single mothers, family members, volunteers who keep vigil at the bedside of those who are dying, those who midwife us to the other side—we invest in our own good death and we give legitimacy - an honored role to non-medical caring professionals. We validate and honor one of the oldest caring professions on earth.

Let’s talk about it: Conversational Confidence

Though America's view of Death is changing rapidly, talking about death is one of our culture’s top taboos. End of life caring literacy program invites us to explore our hopes and fears about dying in advance of the onset of death. Exploring our relationship to death may increase self-knowledge. It may break down barriers between ourselves and others when we most need comfort, communion, trust and safety. When we explore our feelings and thoughts about death, we learn more about our lives now. We come in direct contact with our spiritual beliefs, our life’s purpose, our unfinished business, what our bodies need or want, how we influence and are influenced by our environment and our relationships. We build a foundation of confidence upon which we may then talk about life and death with others. By becoming confident in our ability to talk about death we may have more influence on how we live and how we die. We might reduce harsh, costly interventions that threaten what we value most. We may reduce emotional and financial stress of our families, health care systems and nation. We might place our awareness and attention on our loved ones or on our spiritual life vs. living at any cost. We may be more available to life’s blessings, mysteries, miracles and unexplainable events.